20th Dec. Ay extract from the St. James's Gazette which we published the other day mentioned that the military expenditure of France in the past twenty-one years reached a total exceeding'seven hundred and twenty millions of pounds sterling. 'The sums voted for the French army during the current year already amount to close on twenty-seven millions, and this: is probably not the whole expenditure for the year. France is' so productive a country: and her people so hardworking and so thrifty that this dogs not crush her, even when. there is added to it a waste: of: some fifty-six anillions sterling on the Panama Canal but'there are other European States, Austria-Hungary,, Italy, and Russia,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.